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Water Music (Reply)

I'm listening, for the first time in many years, to von Karajan's recording of the Water Music. This was the version that introduced me to it, but I'm so used to the Hogwood version now that it seems like a different piece at the incredibly slow tempo von Karajan is using. But I have to admit, as I might not have done ten years ago, that he achieves a certain grandeur with it.

In fact, I'm listening to von Karajan's whole catalogue systematically. Its hard for me to understand his early rise, since at the beginning of his career he was far inferior to Szell or Furtwrangler, but by the 1960s he had achieved an interpretation for the Romantic standards that is second to none (I was recently impressed, or impressed again by his Brahms 4th--although I didn't comprehend the depth of that piece until I saw Land Without Bread). I could have done worse than idolizing him in my youth.